While you’re launching your business, you know that having a website and product is only part of it. The other part is marketing your product or service to potential customers.
You need people to see what you’re selling, right? And one way of doing that is having a social media presence.
And while you want people to see your business online, where do you even start? There are a lot of platforms out there, and it can easily get overwhelming. The good thing is your business doesn’t have to be on all of them.
In this article, I’m going to guide you through the process of finding out which social media platform is the best to promote your business.
I know you have your own social media profile. How do I know? I’m a wizard, Harry.
No, it’s because we live in the 21st century where you don’t exist unless you have a social media profile online (what happened to the good ol’ days?).
And this goes for your business as well. While your business doesn’t need social media to function, social media does help your business engage and attract your audience. See, while you may think social media is nothing more than “liking” or “commenting” on posts, it can help your small business grow in multiple ways.
Firstly, it helps increase brand awareness, helping customers become familiar with your business and product. On the surface, a comment may seem like nothing more than just a comment. Yet, these comments, likes, and shares help connect your business with your audience. Every comment and like you get is one step closer to engaging and building relationships with your target audience.
Through social media, you get to engage with your audience personally and provide content that will build trust and authority. Social media also helps grow your subscriber list, allowing you to send newsletters and personalized information to those who subscribe.
Can your business survive without social media? Sure, it can. However, social media can speed up your business’s growth, and help you find your audience.
Before I talk about the different social media platforms available, how do you choose the right ones for your business?
Below, I’m going to give you the steps needed to help you pick a social media channel(s) that suit your business needs. You’ll also get a seriously helpful pdf guide to help you choose the right platforms (so keep scrolling).
Before you start creating a bunch of different profiles for your business, pump the breaks. It’s self-reflection time (don’t you roll your eyes at me!).
But seriously, before anything, you should define your social media goals.
What do you want out of your social media presence? Here are a couple of possible goals you can have:
By understanding what you want to achieve on social media, you can direct your focus on reaching those goals.
You don’t need to be on every single social media channel. Why? Because your audience isn’t on every single social media channel.
To use your social media presence to its full advantage, know where your audience hangs out. Once you know where they spend their time online, that’s where you need to be.
But how do you know where they are online? That comes with audience research.
I highly recommend taking the time to conduct audience research before opening any social media profiles for your business.
Once you know your audience, you’ll know where they hang out online and that changes everything (for the better).
Different content works best on different platforms. For example, Instagram is all about visuals. So, if you have long-form articles, Instagram isn’t the place you need to be.
Take a look at the type of content you’re making, as this will be key for choosing the right social media platforms.
After you’ve sorted out your goals, understand where your audience hangs out online, and know what content you’re going to create, you can then choose social media platform(s). They should all align – from here, choosing the right platform will be easy.
Sometimes we think the best way to handle social media is to be on every platform out there. But that’s not the best way to expose your business. If anything, it’ll exhaust you.
Instead, choose one or two platforms where you’ll be able to connect with your audience in a way that speaks to them. Of course, you can be on more platforms and repurpose your content, but start off easy – there’s no need to jump into the deep end right away.
So, for example, if your customers are 18-22-year-old women who like watching short video clips, you’ll want to be on TikTok and Instagram. But if your customers are 30+ professionals, you’ll want to expose your business on LinkedIn.
See, the trick isn’t having your business on every platform, it’s knowing where your audience spends their time online. If you don’t know your audience, don’t worry. Read this.
When it comes to social media, there’s no doubt that Facebook is the largest platform, with over 2.9 billion monthly active users (now that’s a lot of people).
Facebook is a great platform for leading generation, engaging with customers, and using various types of content. You can also promote your business page via Facebook advertising and target your audience regardless of your budget.
If you have a mix of content, from blogs to videos to Reels, Facebook is a great app to engage with customers, lead generation, and to learn about your audience.
The visual-based app Instagram is ideal if you want to promote visual content like videos and photos.
On Instagram, you have Instagram Shops that make it easy for brands to sell their products on the platform, rather than having to direct customers to a landing page or website.
While older populations do use Instagram, most Instagram users are 18 to 34-years-old.
TikTok came into the world with a boom in 2018 and quickly became a hit (can you blame us? It was Covid time!).
TikTok is a visual-based app that allows users to create 15 to 60-second video clips. If you love creating short-form visual content, TikTok is where you need to be. You can also advertise on TikTok and quickly gain recognition.
Billions of hours are spent on YouTube every single day (it’s the 2nd most active social media platform). It’s the most widespread video streaming platform and is based on visual content.
If you make informative, how-to, or opinion-based videos, YouTube is the place to be, regardless of the age of your audience (everyone’s on YouTube).
Since Google owns YouTube, you can access Google’s advertising platform, which you can use when running YouTube ads.
YouTube also has Reels now, so you can place your short-video content on the platform as well.
If you’re a small business that focuses on a B2B (business to business) model, LinkedIn is a platform you should consider.
LinkedIn is extremely useful for connecting with industry professionals as you can target those based on their job title or specific industry. You can post text, links, videos, and photos.
In comparison to other platforms on this list, Twitter has lower engagement than the rest. Typically, Twitter is used for time-sensitive content, customer service, and breaking news.
You can post photos, videos, and character-limited text. Using hashtags can allow you to see what your customers are talking about and directly engage with them.
Are you looking to engage with your audience, create brand awareness and become an authority in your industry? Quora can help with all those things.
Quora is a Q&A-based website where people can have their questions answered by those who have the answers (or at least think they do and that’s where you can make a difference).
This is where your business can build itself and become a leader in your industry. By helping people and answering their burning questions, you provide value to your audience and build your brand.
If your small business is creative (for example, you have a candle business or clothing brand), Pinterest is the ideal platform to be on. It’s a visual-focused platform with over 300 million monthly active users (primarily women).
Searching on Pinterest can give you endless visuals, regardless of what you’re looking for (there’s everything on Pinterest). Just make sure you use the right keywords.
With 430+ monthly active users, Reddit isn’t a platform that you should ignore. Rather, it’s one of the most engaging communities online.
The online forum allows users to post links, photos, videos, or text with readers “upvoting” or “downvoting” the content. As you probably guessed, the more upvotes a piece of content receives, the more views it gets.
If you want to engage with your customers and learn about your audience, Reddit is a great platform for that.
We want your business to blossom like a flower petal on social media (sorry, I’ve been doing too much yoga).
But for that to happen, you need to know what you want out of your social media presence and the best channels to be on.
We created this pdf to help you decide which social media platform(s) is best for your business.
Download this PDF template and have it available whenever you need.
No one said starting a social media profile for your business was going to be a walk in the park. When you have a small business, you want to make sure you’re investing your time into the right things.
Luckily, with our help, you can take the necessary steps to make sure that you choose the right social media platform(s) for your business. If you know which platforms you want to use, here are the best times to post on social media.
Natasha Ivanovic is a Vancouver-born creative writer that started her writing career as a freelancer while studying for her Master’s in Investigative Psychology. On the weekends, she writes short stories for her blog, TheLonelySerb, and cuddles with her bulldog, Bob.
